The Ukrainian National Guard has been put on high alert due to worsening forest fires around the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant, according to Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

"The forest fire situation around the Chernobyl power plant
has worsened," a statement on Avakov's Facebook page says.

"The forest fire is heading in the direction of Chernobyl's
installations. Treetop flames and strong gusts of wind have
created a real danger of the fire spreading to an area within 20
kilometers of the power plant. There are about 400 hectares [988
acres] of forests in the endangered area."

Police and National
Guard units are on high alert. Ukraine’s Prime Minister
personally went to the affected area to oversee the firefighting.
He says the situation is under control, “but this is the
biggest fire since 1992.”

However, in comments to Russia’s Moscow Speaks radio, a
representative of Greenpeace Russia said that the situation is
much worse: “A very large, catastrophic forest fire is taking
place in a 30-km zone around the Chernobyl power plant. We
estimate the real area of the fire to be 10,000 hectares; this is
based on satellite images. This hasn't been officially
acknowledged yet.”

The potential danger in this fire comes from the radioactive
contaminants the burning plants have absorbed, ecologist
Christopher Busby told RT. “Some of the materials that were
contaminating that area would ahve been incorporated into the
woods. In other words, they land on the ground in 1986 and they
get absorbed into the trees and all the biosphere. And when it
burns, they just become re-suspended. It's like Chernobyl all
over again. All of that material that fell on the ground will now
be burned up into the air and will become available for people to
breathe." Christopher Busby is the scientific secretary of
the European Committee on Radiation Risks.

Ecologist Dmitry Shevchenko from the Environmental Watch on North
Caucasus says it is difficult topredict where exactly the
contaminants will go:“We don't have a real-time
monitoring system for the Chernobyl area. We can hypothesize
whether the radionuclides will go here or there, but there is
no-one who can reliably predict the situation."

Ukrainian emergency services say 182 people and 34 vehicles have
been dispatched to fight the fire. A Mi-8 helicopter and three
An-32 water dropping airplanes are also working at the scene. The
efforts are being coordinated from a mobile emergency
headquarters.

According to the head of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone management
department, radiation levels in the area remain normal. “The
area on fire is relatively clean,” Vasily Zolotoverkh told
the newspaper kp.ua. He said the fire started at lunchtime, when
emergency workers had finished putting out an earlier blaze which
started during the night. The emergency services have stated
that it could have been caused by a lit cigarette.

Ukraine's acting head of emergency services said earlier the
forest fires were not a threat to the sarcophagus sealing off
Chernobyl's crippled Reactor 4.

Chernobyl and the surrounding area have been abandoned and remain
off-limits following the April 1986 disaster, when an explosion
and fire released massive amounts of radioactive material into
the atmosphere. Increased radiation levels were detected
throughout Europe.

Chernobyl became the worst nuclear disaster in world history in
terms of casualties and clean-up costs. Reactor 4, where the
blast took place, was sealed off in a giant reinforced concrete
sarcophagus to prevent further leaks.